Setting Sun
by fandomfatale
Summary: "She's a frustration at first - an exquisite frustration, but a frustration nevertheless." Draven POV, following his relationship with Mon Mothma as mutual respect tinged with mutual frustration becomes something they don't want to live without.
1. The Exquisite Frustration

She's a frustration at first - an exquisite frustration, but a frustration nevertheless. (She's a frustration still. Sometimes.)

It isn't that he minds her position. It's not… _jealousy._ Commander-in-Chief? Chief-of-State? Let her have it. He already made a name for himself in the Clone Wars, and everyone on base knows General Draven, knows him by name and by sight – but he's just as satisfied working in the shadows, doing shadowy work that will and should never be known; to redact reports and fill memos with half-truths, to shepherd the Alliance with an invisible hand. Let Mothma be the figurehead, the orator. She is, after all, the politician. He's a military man. He doesn't need to be standing in the front, as long as he is being heard. (And it would be Cracken or Dodonna before him, anyway, if it wasn't her. Maybe the list is even longer. Maybe he's even further down on it than he wants to admit.)

She used to be worlds away, and the frustration was easier then, but she departed the senate – or what's left of it - in an admirable blaze of sedition. It's still technically called the senate but when you don't have power you're just…what? A gathering of squabbling malcontents? Children, playing a game? The base has to be her permanent home now: she's a wanted woman. (And she confessed to him - maybe to others, but privately to him - that it feels like a prison. No escape for her…and no escape for him.) She still wants them to call her "Senator", and she still wears those ethereal white robes of office. This is exactly what he means – _frustration_. There's no Galactic Senate, not anymore. There's not even an Imperial Senate in anything more than name. There's an emperor, and there's his smokescreen. _Senator Mothma_ … It's either humility, or pride. He's still not sure which. Probably both, somehow. She's full of contradictions without being full of compromise. (There's a little compromise in her, though. Perhaps just enough.)

It's Bail Organa who introduces them, in the last days of the Republic. "The Senate can't fix this. We all know that now," Organa says, to the small group he had secretly assembled at his Coruscanti estate. It's not the first meeting like it, nor the last. She has probably been to all of them but this was Draven's first, though he already knew what was going to be said. "It's time for something _else_."

Organa pulled Draven aside afterwards, and ushered him over to the honorable senator from Chandrila. "There's no one in the senate that I respect or trust more," he said, putting his hand on Mothma's shoulder.

She didn't look like much to him then. She had become a senator at a remarkably young age, but youth didn't impress Draven, and she wasn't remarkably young anymore. (In fact, she seemed to be no younger – or older – than he was.) She was pretty, but not remarkably so, a little willowy for his tastes. But Organa's words _were_ remarkable. And Draven had noticed, in the meeting, her attentive eyes, her economy of words, her penetrating questions and her clarity of thought. He had looked her over with appraising eyes that she tolerated but slightly resented.

"You'll need men like Davits Draven," Organa said to Mothma. She had nodded, and at the reminder her resentment had evaporated away so quickly and so subtly that Draven wasn't sure it had ever been there. She was probably thinking that she knew how to handle men like him. But she was smart enough to know whom to rely upon – whom she would need to rely upon – regardless of what she thought about them otherwise.

And she relies on him.

She's got generals and admirals in spades. Dodonna, Merrick, Raddus, Ackbar. Men to fly ships, men to lead ships. There's nothing to talk about except how many ships there are and how many pilots and where and when they are needed. Draven's work is more important – it's _vital_. Without intelligence, you're just throwing pebbles - if pebbles were your lifeblood and in too short supply. You have to shoot down the right ships, kill the _right_ men, strike when the iron is hot and run when they are coming for you. He's the one who knows these things. He's the one who brings these things to her.

She appreciates their value, even as she grasps desperately for better ways. _Diplomacy_. It's her theater. Her pleasant little fiction. _Convince the senate, convince the senate, convince the senate._ It's her song. The one she must embrace. She knows the look on his face when she sings it. The restrained roll of his eyes. The heavy sigh. She gives him a dry smile in return. "You're a cynic."

"Just another word for 'realist'," he replies.

He doesn't call her an idealist. She's a realist too. A realist with an optimistic checklist of optimistic options that aren't quite exhausted yet, at least not to her estimation. _Convince the senate_.

"Kill the Emperor," he replies.

Mon Mothma would secretly like to see the Emperor vomiting blood at her feet and he likes that about her.

The Emperor's death _would_ win the war. Not right away, but eventually. She's still trying to avoid that war, but he knows that if all-out war doesn't happen, it'll be because they acted too late, not because they achieved her mythic "political solution". It may be too late already. His aim in joining the rebellion had been to stop the Empire before it had become all-powerful – but the sun has already set on an all-powerful Empire. It no longer looms on the horizon: it is here. He has only one aim now: to protect the Rebel Alliance. It's why he lies, why he kills, why he has to be the skeptic. It is such a fragile little thing.

She knows. She understands its fragility, she comprehends some of the ulterior things he has done to safeguard it, from threats without and within. It's why she lets him do things she doesn't agree with – or, in any case, it's why she forgives him. It's why she looks the other way when he oversteps the parameters he has been given. It's why she continues to rely on him and shuts down the complaints of his peers. He doesn't mind their complaints. He does what is necessary.

He overhears the tail end of a conversation once, between Mothma and Dodonna. Voices travel, in the ziggurat. There aren't any doors.

"I know you're not questioning General Draven's commitment to the cause?"

"Certainly not," Dodonna protests. He begins to speak again but she gently cuts him off, in that gracefully gentle way she has.

"And you trust my judgment?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then there's nothing more to say," she finishes, though not brusquely. Dodonna makes a respectful utterance of concession, and passes by Draven in the corridor outside of her office doorway as he leaves with a scowl.

"I suppose he made a special trip here to tell you how much he respects and admires me," Draven jokes grimly as he enters.

"No, only your subordinates do that." She means it. It's enough for him.

It seems like he's in her office every day for Operation Fracture. Mysterious cargo shipments, rumors of a mysterious super weapon. It has them scurrying. Then Captain Andor brings them back word of a planet killer. Draven will investigate until he knows all there is to know but he's not ready to believe it yet, not without proof. But Mothma believes it. She says it to him before she shares it with the meeting: "A weapon that murders worlds is the natural culmination of everything the Emperor has done." He agrees but he won't go off logic alone: he wants evidence.

If it's true, then the Empire wasn't all-powerful before, but it is now. And it will surely be the end of the Alliance if nothing is done about it. Perhaps it will be the end of the Alliance no matter what.

They disagree as often – perhaps more often – than ever, but he's in her confidence in a way he never has been before. They disagree about Jyn Erso, about Galen Erso, about the oversight committee and about the council. They argue in the morning, they argue in the evening, taking turns pacing and piling on counterpoints and his hands gripping his belt in impatience as he listens. They argue in writing, and on rare occasion, over the comm. They argue more than they need to. He's in her office more often than he needs to be.

Everyone can see that he's in her confidence. They look to each other in meetings. Exchange nods, exchange somber looks. An entire private conversation in front of everyone, full of references to previous private conversations from which the others had been excluded entirely. The others think that maybe it will pass, once the crisis has passed.

But this is no ordinary crisis: _Weapon Confirmed. Jedha City destroyed._

She doesn't lambaste him for the decision he made concerning the Imperial installation on Eadu, but she's not pleased. She smooths out her robes. Once, no, three times. She's beginning to suspect, quite rightly, that he had intended to assassinate Galen Erso all along. It would have spared her this farce of attempting to get the senate on her side with Erso's testimony, but she's not grateful, not even as she admits it is – at least for now – a lost cause. He's prepared to defend every decision, every _mistake_ that he has made, but...her quiet censure rattles him more than he's comfortable with.

The conversation, however, ends with the affirmation of her support as she leaves it to him to coordinate the security of the Alliance council meeting and the arrivals and departures of the councilors. He doesn't much care for these meetings. The risk is enormous – high profile visitors from all over the galaxy – including the Core - complete with unvetted entourages…It's supposed to be a _secret_ base, of _trusted_ personnel. He wouldn't trust most of the people that were coming with the codes to the base armory let alone the base itself and the future of the Alliance.

Draven organizes fighter escorts for the visitors with Merrick, and for once they don't butt heads. There's a respect between them – perhaps more than between Draven and most of his peers in Alliance high command - but Merrick cares too much about his pilots and thinks that Draven doesn't care enough – (ridiculous, of course) - so they frequently clash over minutiae that Merrick doesn't realize is minutiae.

Draven might be in Mothma's confidence but she's friendlier with Merrick. More smiles. More small talk. There was a time when Draven wondered if they were _together_ ; he had wanted to congratulate them on finding something amidst all the chaos and hardship of the rebellion, but the words caught in his throat. He made a harmless innuendo about their relationship to Mothma, careful to keep any curiosity out of his tone. She took his meaning both right and wrong, since she seemed to assume he was implying she was favoring Merrick or putting her love life before the needs of the Alliance.

"Your concerns are quite unfounded," she declared, uncharacteristically flustered. "I have always chosen governance over my personal life. And as for General Merrick…we are nothing more than colleagues." She added, stammering a little: "I would be hard pressed to even call usfriends."

That went a little too far. Maybe she went too far on purpose, in an effort to reassure him. "I have no concerns," Draven clarified stiffly, studying her. But maybe there had been concerns of a kind, since he was decidedly pleased to learn that Merrick was little more to her than any other man on Yavin IV.

Merrick is on Mothma's side in the council meeting, but Draven is not. They're backing the Erso girl's gambit to go after the so-called _Death Star_ 's schematics in the Imperial data vault on Scarif. "Send the whole rebel fleet if you have to," Jyn Erso says.

But the whole rebel fleet is all that they have. If it's a trap, if they're overwhelmed by Imperial forces, if the schematics aren't there or if they don't contain the information needed, then that's it. The Alliance blown out like a candle. He can't advocate that. He can't engage with that kind of risk.

But Draven is the least of Mothma's problems in the meeting. His presentation to the council is not editorialized – it is factual and succint. The councilors don't need to be told to be afraid of what might happen - it's the one thing they're good at. And Mothma doesn't blame him for being conservative – the Death Star _might not_ be capable of blowing up planets as advertised, Galen Erso _might not_ be trustworthy, it _might not_ be a good idea to risk their entire navy on a fundamentally unsound last-minute plan. Everything he says is true, if loaded. And she courts disagreement, because it's no longer allowed in the Empire.

But the battle still happens. In spite of him. In spite of the council. He warns Mothma not to join in (after imagining her rallying the men inspirationally aboard one of the ships and then getting vaporized in a Star Destroyer discharge), but he doesn't need to: she's got her practical side too. They listen to the fighting together in the comm center – reports mainly from Raddus and the Profundity, but occasionally from some of the other capital ships. Merrick dies. Many other pilots are lost. And then the entire surface team – the Erso girl, Captain Andor, countless other good men and women - _heroes_ – are blown to bits by the Empire's super weapon. There are conflicting accounts about the Death Star plans. Raddus thinks they were transmitted and received, but they weren't received by the Profundity. No one knows anything for sure, except that they don't have them.

It's a dark night for her. She fades away from group mourning and retires to her office. He brings some brandy up. "It's not from Corellia, but it will have to do," he tells her, pouring her a glass and setting it down in front of her on her desk.

She downs it in a single go, but without zeal. "It was all for nothing."

"We don't know that," he counters. "We haven't heard back from the Princess' ship."

"Are you being optimistic, General?" she teases solemnly.

"Never," he replies.

His thoughts are inward – on Cassian Andor, Antoc Merrick, and the others that were lost – when he is startled by her discerning gaze, crossing the space that separates her from him and burrowing in. "You respect me more than you let on," she remarks. "I was expecting your reproaches."

It might be true.

There are no reproaches or recriminations between them that night. Would the mission have gone better with full support from Alliance command? Was it doomed from the start? Had Draven been right? Or Jyn Erso? They don't worry or even care about any of that right then. They take the moment to just be…sad. He gives her another two fingers of brandy and they toast to the fallen.

The risks of the council meeting still have him uneasy - not just that someone might have been followed, but that fear of the Death Star will turn friends into knowledgeable enemies. Mothma shares his anxiety and had given him permission to begin scouting for a new headquarters, but he doesn't want to leave right then. There is too much uncertainty on the base and despite her ever-stoic countenance, he can tell she is disheartened, perhaps even suffering from self-doubt. So he sends out others, in his stead, and he stays.

They share a drink in the evenings. Wine, usually. To decompress and debrief. He's sick of this dank, muggy jungle moon, but the sunset from Mothma's window makes it almost tolerable. After a few days, they have more bad news – confirmation of the full annihilative powers of the Death Star super weapon. Alderaan, destroyed. Destroyed completely. And Bail Organa gone with it. The fact that the Emperor has also disbanded the senate hardly registers.

She cries. He comes upon her crying silently at her desk and tries to surreptitiously back out, but she lifts her head and sees him through a veil of tears. "I'm sorry," she apologizes, straightening up in her chair and hastily wiping away tears only for them to be immediately replaced.

"For what?" he says, as softly as he can. His eyes sting too.

She nods gratefully and holds nothing back.

It pleases him to see behind the curtain of dignity and restraint, almost as much as it pains him to see how much she is suffering. He prays that today is not the day that breaks her. But behind the curtain there is only more strength and more grace. There is even dignity in the sobs that rack her body. It is beautiful, how much she _cares_. Her heart is beautiful.

Notes: Thanks for reading! I wrote a commentary on Draven and Mothma's relationship that might possibly maybe? be of interest to some of you. There is a link to it on my profile page. I included a lot of relevant quotes from the novelization and a break down of their interactions in the movie.


	2. Unfortunate Realities

Then, finally, some good news. Organa's daughter returns with the schematics. With the guidance Jyn Erso had given them about the reactor module, they quickly find an exterior weakness and launch a successful assault against the battle station. Draven didn't expect to be celebrating anything so soon – let alone the destruction of the planet killer. There's carousing in the Great Temple – singing and dancing, a fair amount of weeping too. There has never been a party like it on Massassi Base but Draven can't forget, even for a single night, that the Empire is still out there. It wasn't so very long ago that they didn't even know about the Death Star, and they were no less at war.

He finds Mothma in her office yet again, staring pensively out her window. He didn't leave to find her, but found her all the same. A ferocious peal of thunder shakes the earth beneath them and then the skies open up. They haven't seen hard rain like this in over a month. It's cacophonous.

A wonderfully cool breeze draws him over to the window and to her. "You should be down there with them," he says.

The revelers have run outside and they're dancing madly in the shower. An ecstatic holler, hardly human, pierces the night and the pounding of the rain. Its originator spins in three drunken circles and then falls into the mud. Five other young men run over and dog pile on top of him.

Draven and Mothma glance at each other and laugh.

"Maybe not," he corrects, and they laugh again.

"I am with them in spirit."

"I hope so. We should celebrate when we can. What happened to Alderaan will never happen again. That's worth celebrating."

Mothma turns a wry look upon him. "You don't look as if you're celebrating."

"You know me by now." It's the only explanation he gives.

He expects her to smile at that – at her gruff, no-nonsense general - but she doesn't. "If you're the man I think you are," she says finally, after a long silence, "then you're dwelling on what you've done wrong. On the mistakes you've made. You're probably blaming yourself, and wondering if you're fit for your position."

He's hit with a terrible panic until she adds: "I am wondering those things about myself."

He's not sure what to say. She's right, of course. He was wrong about Galen Erso, about Jyn Erso and the Scarif mission. And he had been more than a step behind on all of it. He has been wrong, perhaps, about a great many things. It didn't used to haunt him but it does now, because…

"You know how close we came to not having this victory," she continues, finishing his thought exactly.

She offers him no absolution; she has none to spare, not enough even for herself.

Unexpectedly, she elbows him. "What are _you_ doing engaging in such a futile exercise? You are Davits Draven: _enemy of futility_. Mercilessly forward thinking."

He thinks to himself that he should smile for her, but he already is. "Even old dogs can learn new tricks."

She smiles. "Not so old."

"Perhaps not."

The recruits down in the mud make him feel old. Maybe Mothma doesn't.

Even as they stand inside the rain is misting them, from splash and from wind. She reaches up to pull down her tarp – a poor excuse for a window covering - and for the first time he truly feels sorry for her that she must forego the elegant senate offices on Coruscant, with their plush carpets, chandeliers, and floor-to-ceiling glass. She deserves to be in a place like that. He has always served near the field, on ships or in makeshift headquarters. The humidity is starting to drive him a little mad but he's not hurting for lack of luxury.

With the window tented and the vast openness of the jungle canopy closed off to them, it suddenly seems that they are standing very close to each other.

He's wearing the wrong jacket for this weather – it's absorbing all the moisture. He pats it lightly. "A bit like standing by a waterfall." He almost cringes at his awkward attempt at idle conversation, and he sounds too much like he's debriefing one of his agents after a mission gone wrong.

"I've never been to a waterfall," she says, wistful, after a grin that tells him she knows he's distressed. He's not sure if she's honoring his effort or torturing him. "I've seen many quite lovely ones, on Chandrila, on Naboo – but only from afar."

Perhaps it's only that he's eager to speak of his home world but the chatting becomes easier: "I grew up in the mountains and there were many. Some of the largest ones on the planet were in my region, but nothing impressive on a galactic scale."

"Pendarr III, is that right?" It is right, and he's impressed she knows. "Do you miss home?" she asks.

"Yes." He hadn't planned on saying anything more, but her eyes urge him to continue: "I miss it sometimes. I left to defend it from the Separatists, but my path hasn't taken me back there yet."

"Do you have any family?"

"My mother and sister, and her children whom I've never met. I tell myself I'll see them when this is all over. But the end has never been in sight."

"You should go back to Pendarr, the next chance you get. If I could go to Chandrila, I would go this very minute." He accepts her advice – her _command_ – with a sympathetic nod. "And you never married?" she then asks, and there's a slight change in the air. The conversation doesn't seem quite so idle anymore and his instinct is to flee.

"Too busy," he answers.

She replies, with a hint of regret: "I know something about that."

"You married the rebellion."

"We both did."

Music and laughter keep him up that night. Or something else. He turns from one side to the other and back again, his eyelids popping open as if out of his control to stare at the mossy stone ceiling as he kicks the sheet off in frustrated swelter. He has the nagging feeling he left something undone or unsaid in his conversation with Mothma.

He's growing introspective in his old age.

Draven attends the medal ceremony commending the heroes who helped bring down the Death Star, but his mind is on the next step. His scouts have brought back a list of uninhabited planets and moons where the Alliance might station its next headquarters, but the most recent battle's proximity to Yavin has accelerated their timetable. He and Dodonna turn their focus away from choosing a new base and towards a carefully choreographed migration from Yavin, implementing all the lessons they learned when they left Dantooine. The planning required to find a home on board the fleet for the entire population of Massassi Base is extensive. No one knows how long it will be before they can settle on the ground again.

The entire rebel navy comes to assist with the evacuation of Yavin, and not a moment too soon. Draven oversees Mothma's departure personally. He sends her in the middle of the exodus, cushioning her between the vanguard and the dangers of the rear. He would have liked to have been on her ship but he's taking responsibility for the tail.

The evacuation is clean. He finds her first thing once his shuttle lands on her flag ship and gives her a firm nod across the milling crowd. She sighs with relief, and a faint smile crosses her face. She nods back.

Operating from the fleet isn't ideal, but they manage. Weeks go by. Despite their escape, reprisals for the Death Star are on everyone's mind, especially Draven's, but the intel is scarce. He sends a team deeper into Imperial space and none of them return. Mothma is furious, at least as furious as her cool exterior allows her to be. "It wasn't your initiative to take," she says. "You didn't run it by me, because you knew I would say no." And then: "When we disagree, you don't get to do as you please." And finally: "It isn't just insubordination, it's disrespect." She reminds him, hurtfully, that General Cracken is the Alliance's intelligence chief, not him. And then she dismisses him coldly.

He thinks she is inordinately upset with him, but he is efficiently chastised. However, he can't help but think that it was his team's failure – and not their deaths – that was unacceptable. If they had sent back actionable intelligence, even at the cost of their lives, she would have had to have acknowledged the legitimacy and value of the mission.

He acknowledges to himself that it was a mistake. And if he could, he would trade 20 pilots and tens of thousands of stormtroopers to get his agents back.

She won't let him protect her by keeping her out of the loop. He doesn't want these things on her conscience. He can carry them. She shouldn't have to.

They're at odds. Permanently. A former senator from the Hosnian system wants to be on the council. He has 30 ships and over 200 men. Draven doesn't trust him. Mothma ate tea cakes with him once at a senate luncheon and thinks he's dependable. There's mass slaughter of the native species on the planet Ilben by the Empire. She wants to intervene but _he_ knows they can't. For just a moment she looks as if she thinks he enjoys mass slaughter. A brilliant Imperial general on Desra is single-handedly responsible for keeping the entire planet under the Empire's rule. The only one who can get close enough to assassinate him is his interpreter, still an adolescent, who offered to do it if the Alliance could arm him. He'll surely be killed or taken into Imperial custody. Mothma won't say yes but Draven does.

He is unapologetic. He was placed in this position for his strategic mind. Every uncomfortable decision, every unfortunate reality, every regrettable sacrifice, is pushed on him. It's who they need him to be. If they can't do it, then he will.

"We have to be better than them," she says. Her new mantra, her new song.

"You want to win, don't you?"

General Cracken returns from his work in the field and resumes his duties as head of intelligence. He meets with Mothma when meetings are required. The command table is smaller aboard her ship; Cracken is the one with a seat. Draven is busy scouting – new planets for the fleet to orbit when discovery forces them to migrate, and when he can, candidates for their new Base One – and he rarely sees her.

"The chancellor speaks highly of the work you did while I was gone," Cracken tells him.

"Does she?" He's not skeptical she said it, but a little skeptical that she meant it.

Sometimes she sits in on his consultations with Dodonna about the new base. Slowly, they're narrowing down their list.

He loses count of the months, and he can feel the rebels aching to put their feet on the ground. He can handle space, but they're crippled functionally. The sooner they find a permanent base, the better.

"You've overcorrected," she says dryly, when he shows her a dossier on Hoth. "Instead of sweating we will be losing fingers and toes to the cold." They're in orbit around Avla Laturne, and he hasn't seen her in seven weeks.

"There's very little Imperial activity in that quadrant, and the snow is excellent camouflage. There's substantial cave work already that we can take advantage of."

"Please tell me this is just a lesson in appreciating Yavin," she begs. "I can feel my appreciation growing by the minute." He's getting a little nostalgic himself, for the red gas giant hung in the sky that turned purple as the sun went down, and for those ancient, enigmatic edifices that had given them shelter. And she is right: it won't take long on Hoth before he misses the heat and the heady smell of jungle trees even more than he already does.

Only a few weeks away from the fleet and he missed her too. He feels an unmistakable sensation of relief when he lays eyes upon her at her desk. He hadn't realized it until that moment but he is developing a protective instinct for her, more akin to what one might feel for a queen than a chancellor. Perhaps he is coming around to seeing her as the indispensable and irreplaceable asset to the Alliance that Bail Organa and others had always believed her to be.

They begin preliminary construction on the new base on Hoth.

Hoth could not be less like Yavin IV. Draven's lips are chapped by the second day. His knuckles peel. His nose bleeds. The days are cold and the nights are colder. The rebels sleep on simple cots with a sort of solidarity and pride – "Anything for the Alliance!" – bundled up in all the clothes they might have worn out into the ice and snow. They're enjoying fresh air, even the frigid kind. He's in the barracks with everyone else, at least for now. Friends and couples squeeze into the same bunks, spooning each other for warmth. Hoth makes you long for company in a way that Yavin never did. On Yavin, you would rather go and sleep out in the dirt than share a bed.

The tunnel system is tight and confusing to navigate. Draven isn't sure how much of that is the architect's fault but he would like to leave the man outside the gate for the night. They call it Echo Base, and he hears her voice before he rounds the corner and sees her. They've been on Hoth for two weeks when they run into each other for the first time in those damned halls. An astromech droid rolls indecorously past, driving them even closer together than the confines already had. Endemically disrespectful, those droids. Draven catches himself against the wall, sparing a glare at the oblivious machine.

"Ma'am," he greets formally, righting himself.

She bites her lip at his formality. "General."

He begins moving past her towards his destination, until he hears her ask unsurely from behind him, "How are you settling in?"

He swivels around. "No worse than anyone else."

"Good. I'm glad to hear that."

"And you, Ma'am?"

"The same, I suppose. It's not a very comfortable place, is it?" She grips the edges of her white fur coat and pulls it tightly around her. Her face becomes narrow between the folds of the hood, lovely against it with the hint of her auburn hair.

"No."

They are both thinking that they miss the days on Yavin, but they don't say it. He nods to her and leaves.

And then it comes. A blitz. Bombs over Hoth without warning. It has been no longer than a month and the Empire has already found them. It's pandemonium as they flee. The fighters are on their own as the larger ships help with the evacuation, and Echo Base shakes with explosions and the footfalls of AT-ATs. He finds Mothma is the hangar. General Rieekan, the base commander, is pushing her into a long-range shuttle.

"Go with her," Rieekan tells him, spotting Draven as he runs over.

"I can't go yet!" he protests, shouting over the roar of dozens of engines. "I'll go last, like I did on Yavin."

The pilot pokes his head out of the cockpit: "We're ready for takeoff."

"Cracken is overseeing the removal of all sensitive and necessary information from your office and the Princess and I will make sure everyone makes it out. Just go. Go now!"

Draven is staring at the door back in to the tunnels, but she steps down the ramp and takes his hand. "Draven, let's go," she says. He knows it's hard for her to leave behind Leia Organa, her friend and mentee. He must do as she is doing, and trust their people. "Davits," she repeats, firm but not impatient. She has never addressed him by his first name before.

They break free of Hoth's atmosphere with a stronger thrust than he has ever felt, the pilot scrambling to get them out of the system. TIE fighters loop around to watch them, but only a Star Destroyer gets off a shot. It misses by a wide margin and their ship makes the jump to hyperspace and to safety.

The protocol is radio silence. There's no way to know who is dead, and who made it out. It's a sort of limbo. They'll hop around the galaxy a few times before heading to the rendezvous point, just in case.

Draven and Mothma aren't alone. In the cabin with them are two other escapees – a young female technician and a comm operative of a species Draven couldn't name. The ship is at capacity with the four of them, the pilot, and his co-pilot. Arguably, it can't even hold six comfortably for a trip of what might be several days. Mothma offers them a few words of comfort and then turns introspective. Draven expects their chancellor to be stunned. But she's not in shock - she's wired, jittery. She paces.

There's very little to say. While they might not know exactly what they did wrong, what was clear was that they had not been careful enough. And while they didn't yet know who they had lost on Hoth, this had been the worst blow struck against the Alliance to date. There was no point – no benefit - to voicing those ideas. There was nothing to discuss, nothing to figure out.

He admires the way she handles the shock. She's stressed, overwhelmed even, but she doesn't wallow in disbelief. She's already strategizing.

"Sometimes I think I'm not strong enough," she whispers, after the others have fallen asleep out of boredom and exhausting uncertainty. She's sitting now, holding her head in her hands.

"You are," he assures her, with so much confidence that he doesn't even emphasize it.

"When you say it, I believe you."

"Because you know I wouldn't say it merely for the sake of your feelings."

She gives him the trace of a smile: "I'm not so sure."

"You wouldn't want me getting soft. What use would I be to you then?" She picks up on the bitter note and begins to speak, but then thinks better of it. "I'm sorry. I'm on edge," he apologizes, rubbing his forehead.

"You have a very steadying presence. Has anyone ever told you that?"

It's not what he expects her to say. "No, I don't think anyone ever has," he replies dryly. 'Steadying'?He doesn't imagine that's how he is perceived.

"I'm glad you're here with me. I feel better, just having you here." He stirs, uncomfortable at the compliment. "I'm not really thinking about what happened today. I'm thinking about tomorrow. About what comes next. And it's…it's too much," she continues. "But you're here. And you'll face tomorrow with me. And you'll make sure the Alliance lives on. I am…reassured."

"Are you sure you still want me? I'm in intelligence. Look at what just happened." He hears his own voice, thick with grief and regret.

"This was not your fault. I'm not certain a mistake was even made. There will always be things about the Empire's power that we will not know and cannot understand. Clearly they see us as a threat now in a way they never did before. We cannot continue as we have in the past. I can only hope that there are enough of us left that we _may_ continue."


	3. Flight of the Star Dove

They attempt to sleep. Their shuttle – the Star Dove - is on the small end of spacecraft design but is _relatively_ spacious for a shuttle. There's a closet-sized room in the back of the cabin with a private bunk jammed in between floor and overhead storage. She's either too proud or too humble to take it, until he offers lip service about shifts and urges her back there (with a guiding hand on her lower back that it occurs to him later might have been impertinent). She gives him a last doleful look before closing the door. He dozes a little in his seat, on and off, enough so that he's not sure how much time has passed, but he figures less than an hour. The lights are dimmed but there are shadows cast across his face as she opens the door. He leaps at the chance to escape his troubled dreams and stiffening neck, rising and meeting her in the doorway.

"I can't sleep," she whispers. "The bed is wasted on me."

He sighs: "Keep the bed; I don't want to sleep. My head's not in the right place for it." He wonders if there is anything to read or cards for sabacc – something to get their minds off the situation. He doesn't want to be alone with his thoughts anymore. He glances around in the dark and then feels her eyes on him.

They stare unsurely at each other, and he's keenly aware of the low light, and her proximity. She's such a regal, formidable figure in front of the council, or behind her desk. A tower of rectitude and composure. She seems almost small now – no match for his height and slight under all those robes and coats. He bought into the myth of the woman all this time – he didn't think that he had, but he had. But she's not a myth, she's just a woman.

"We need a distraction," she says. Her tone is matter-of-fact; her gaze is anything but. She backs into the bedroom and then waits expectantly for him to follow her in, which he does. He reaches behind him and finds the button for the door easily, closing it. It's all so easy, as effortless and as exhilarating as falling. He should be shocked, but he's not. It feels...natural, except for the profound hammering of his heart

Inside the room it's darker yet, with no fixed lighting, only the ambient light from the stars via a small porthole. It's enough, though, to see. He sees her in the gleam of the stars as she takes another step back towards the bed. He sees a glint of resentment in her expression, in her quickening breath and parting lips – as if she had always intended to avoid this. As if she would rather not feel this way. As if a man like him is not what she had had in mind.

Perhaps it should, but it doesn't bother him to be wanted in spite of himself. In fact, his confidence only grows. He kisses her - one arm snaked low across her back; the palm of his other hand flat between her shoulder blades. He restrains himself with the kiss, too proud to come across as desperate, even as he's realizing that he wants this and has wanted it. With moderation he deepens it, tightening his embrace and moving his hands with some pressure against her back. She's enjoying it; she's melting in his arms. There's a hint of a moan off her tongue as he withdraws for air. He can feel her panting, her chest moving against his. He can feel every little movement but he wants it to be closer and he wants to feel more.

That glint of resentment, which reminded him so much of the younger woman he met on Coruscant, is gone. Their lips come back together more aggressively. This time, she angles her head. This time, she wraps her arms around his back underneath his jacket, searching under his jacket and under his shirt for his skin. She untucks his shirt and he lets his jacket fall off his shoulders and onto the floor but he would rather kiss her and hold her than undress, at least for the moment. He kisses her neck and she shudders.

It doesn't even cross his mind that it might be inappropriate, given the circumstances. They can't mourn – they don't know yet who didn't survive the battle. Without information, they can't mourn or plan or evaluate. They can only fret and regret and torture themselves with unanswered questions. He's worried about other things, like if the pilot might walk in. The distraction is working. He has never been so distracted in his entire life.

He's impatient to divest himself of his clothes now and it's interminable work: buckles here and buckles there and two of everything. She's shy, in removing her robes. They are careful with her livery, her medal. She has simple undergarments on underneath, and they climb into the bed and under the wool blanket not entirely naked. How long, since either one of them has done this? And they're not kids anymore. Maybe next time – if there is a next time, he really shouldn't be thinking about next times – they won't be so self-conscious.

This bed is worse (and smaller) than his cot in the common barracks on Hoth. There's no springs, just a lumpy stuffed mattress that has – like most things in the Alliance - seen better days. They are awkward and clumsy as they maneuver to discard their remaining clothing and situate themselves on the bed but they laugh about it. He feels the laughter in her chest against his, skin to skin, and he thinks it might be the best thing he has ever felt. It may only be a single moment in a lifetime of struggle but she is racked with laughter and not sobbing and that is good.

He kisses against her laughing lips and for a few minutes he forgets to do anything else because it's so _nice_. But then he notices her begin to flounder under him, writhe, with impatient frustration and desire and the heat has built and he is ready and she is ready.

Afterwards, she lies draped across his chest. Nestling up together something imposed upon them by the size of the bed and he's not at all certain it would have happened otherwise, but maybe it would have... It's cold enough to cleave together – the one thing that makes him glad that they're not in her former full-sized bed on Yavin IV, staring out her window at the big red planet in the sky and periodically wiping sweat from their brows.

He should have kissed her that night, after the Death Star. In the rain.

Her mind seems to be on Yavin too: "This might have very easily happened years ago."

"Do you regret that it didn't?" he asks.

"Do you?"

"Yes."

She smiles. He can't see her face but he can feel her do it. "I wonder if it was meant to be this way," she muses. "If it had happened earlier it might have been too…casual." She hesitates over the last word, breathless and quiet.

But he's relieved to hear her say it. He rewards her risk with uncharacteristic tenderness and hesitantly kisses the top of her head.

They fall asleep, eventually, to starlight and the hum of the Star Dove's engine. He wakes with a start when the ship drops out of hyperspace, and he finds her eyes in the dark, as wide with surprise as his.

"We should probably go confer with the captain, Ma'am. We may be approaching the rendezvous point."

She laughs at his 'Ma'am'. "I think, in here, you had better call me Mon," she tells him. " _General_ ," she adds, teasingly. But then she's all business as she begins dressing.

He wonders if there's any chance the people on the other side of the door are still asleep. Maybe if he walks out holding a datapad they'll think it was a meeting of minds rather than bodies. After all, a tech and a comm operator don't get to be privy to a classified conference just because they're on the same ship as their chancellor. It would make sense to meet in private.

When they emerge, the non-human is still sleeping, or sleeping once more, but the young woman's eyes are shaded with conjecture. She seems more amused than anything and bites her lip to hide a smile. He keeps a neutral face and rushes past her towards the cockpit.

More were lost on Hoth than Draven had hoped. But Cracken, the Princess, Dodonna, and others had made it out alive. Alliance High Command meets briefly on the rendezvous planet and for once comes to a unanimous conclusion: another home base would end in another catastrophe. They may never know how the Empire found them at Echo Base, but it would surely find them again. So they split up and take refuge in temporary camps, scattered around the galaxy for safety.

They send Mothma to the outer rim, away from heart of Imperial territory. 5251977. The planet doesn't even have a name. Draven is needed closer to the field. Their goodbye is rushed and public.

"Ma'am, I worry about your safety."

She musters a weak smile: "I'll miss you too, General."

They exchange nods and board their respective ships for their respective destinations.

The work keeps them apart for months and it feels like even longer. Interstellar communication doesn't allow for any privacy. He has cause to, professionally, send her a few memos. He hopes she can read between the lines, and hear affection in his terms of respect and longing in his assertions of loyalty. But most of his reports go to General Cracken who distills all the information for concise, integrated summaries to the chancellor.

Amidst rumors from the Bothan spynet, he is finally dispatched to Mothma's new camp on Zastiga to brief her when Cracken is too occupied to go and the information is too important to be sent by transmission. Their greeting is also rushed and public, but she meets him at the bottom of the ramp of his ship when he arrives and the gesture is so stocked with meaning that he doesn't care how many people are around.

"You're a sight for sore eyes, General."

"Thank you, Ma'am. I could say the same to you."

The briefing comes first and Mothma invites several of her advisers and generals to stay for it.

"They're building something," Draven says simply. It's the only fact he has to present.

"This is feeling very familiar," she remarks, somber.

"Is it true?" one demands. "Is it another Death Star?"

"Is it operational?" another shouts.

Draven waves them down. "We're still waiting on confirmation of that. The Bothans are close. We'll know more soon."

Most likely, it _is_ another Death Star, another planet killer. This is exactly what Draven had hoped Galen Erso's death would prevent. But Erso had died too late, or the Empire was too determined.

Mothma – _Mon_ , he has come to think of her as Mon during their months apart – dismisses the others.

"You do think it's another Death Star, don't you?" she asks. She's standing, he's sitting in front of her desk.

"Yes."

"It never ends, does it?"

He leans forward. "I think it reeks of desperation."

"They're hardly desperate."

"Let them pour all their resources and men into a battle station that we can destroy with a single blow."

"But it's not a single blow, is it? It's all of our squadrons in the air, at risk. How many will we lose ? And who knows what they've done differently this time. And they'll recover. They always _recover_."

"It's bleak. But it has always been bleak."

She smiles weakly: "I shouldn't find that reassuring, but I do."

"It's my 'steadying presence'," he says, recalling the phrase she used as they fled Hoth and hoping she'll recognize it. He can tell by her growing smile that she does.

"Your steadying presence has been missed." She's backlit against the sun as she turns away from him to stare out at the barren Zastigan landscape through her window. "I have taken you for granted in the past."

He may have felt that way once, but not since the Star Dove. In some ways, she had given him more credit and trust than he deserved. "No, Ma'am."

"No, Draven, I have. I've learned the lessons that only your absence could have taught me. That was the first."

"What was the second?"

"That I missed you more than I thought I would, in ways that surprised me. And I expected to miss you. I knew that I would. I think I missed most of all the way you put your hands on your sides under your jacket when you're thinking…or when you're arguing."

"Perhaps you'd like to argue?" he jokes. "For old time's sake."

"We have many arguments left ahead of us, I am sure. We needn't fabricate any." She turns around then. "When do you leave?"

"I'm expected back in three days."

"It's soon."

"It's not as soon as it might have been."

"It's sooner than I want it to be."

It seems like they don't even leave her bedroom until the three days are up. It takes them longer to get there than it might have. Maybe it's pride or maybe it's insecurity, or maybe these doubts are based on years of tension and conflict. Had she ever intended for there to be a "next time"? But finally the electric silence is too much and he decides they are wasting time and he kisses her. She throws her arms around his neck and eventually slides a hand into his hair. She's not only passionate about democracy.

Their affair is the worst kept secret on Zastiga, but if anyone disapproves they don't let on. Draven knows they're gossiping but he doesn't begrudge them something to take their minds off of it all.

He doesn't like waking up next to her, serenely bathed in the light of the rising sun, waking slowly and lazily to sensation of her foot against his and the scent of her hair. Because now he knows what it feels like. And soon he'll know what it feels like to miss it. He knows what it feels like to read over a file together lying next to each other in bed. He knows what it feels like to hear her whispering his name – his first name – in his ear as they make love. And he knows what it feels like to have her yank on his hand as he's climbing to his feet, pulling him back into the bed, unwilling to part with him.

"I'm hungry."

"You won't starve."

She'll let him go eventually and he'll bring back an extra caf for her.

He hates knowing these things.

They don't discuss the future. It's bad luck in the Alliance to talk about "after", and Draven and Mothma are as superstitious about it as anyone. They make no attempt to define what they are to each other. He's not worried he'll return to her one day to find she's indifferent. That's enough to get him by.

Draven returns to the field, but it's only weeks later that High Command and the Rebel Council are convening to decide on a course of action based on their new intel, and he gets to see her again. They share shy smiles across a crowded room and stand shoulder to shoulder when they can. The Alliance now has the confirmation that it needs: a second Death Star orbiting Endor, and the Emperor himself there to oversee its completion. They plan their attack, and it requires more good luck and blessings from the Force than Draven is comfortable with, but he agrees that it is the time to strike.

It's the exact trap he had feared with Scarif but it turns out all right – better than all right. Death Star II is dust and the Emperor with it. For the first time the Alliance has the advantage and many systems join their cause to eliminate what remains of the Empire's forces.

They celebrate. It's a celebration unlike any the galaxy has ever seen. They're not on Yavin and it's not raining but he's sure to kiss her this time.

He's busy with the final battles of the war but travel is easier and he's able to visit her. After they win at Jakku and the war is over he goes to Pendarr III to spend several weeks with his family as he had always vowed to do, and then joins Mothma on Chandrila. It's the home for now of the new senate, but she's not Senator Mothma anymore, she's the chancellor.

They don't decide to live together as much as it just happens. She _is_ home, there is no home except with her. That has been true for a long time. Her estate on Chandrila is a paradise but he's not the type to spend the day lazing on the shore, or sleeping in and reading until lunch. (She can get him to sit back and watch the sun set over the water, sometimes. She likes picnics and her campaign to make him like them too is one of the fiercest she has ever waged.) Even though the war is won and she spearheads scaling back the military so that there is hardly a military to speak of, there is still work for him to do serving and protecting the New Republic. The new senators are as troublesome as the last ones were, and while she tries to hold them together he tries to ensure that she doesn't have to worry about remnants of the Empire or insurgencies of their own.

She gave up a man, once, to serve the people. He makes sure she doesn't have to choose again. They see each other when they can. They see each other enough. Or just the right amount of not-quite-enough so that their time together is treasured and special. They still argue, disagree. Slightly less than before, but still. But they argue about things, not at each other, and she values his opinions and he respects her decisions.

He does propose marriage…sort of: "We'll do it when you retire," he says. Their 'engagement' lasts for over a decade but she says she's glad she can think of him as her fiancé during all that time. She finally does retire – later than he would have liked, but earlier than everyone else's preference - and they have an intimate little ceremony attended by a few close friends. Everyone shakes their hands and says, "Finally." Leia Organa is there, the new chancellor, and Draven makes her promise not to come bothering them too much with senate problems: "There's always some crisis going on," he says. Leia laughs and agrees: "Mon has earned some peace." It's not long before Mothma's presence is again required to stabilize senate troubles, but in the end Leia shields them more than she needed to (maybe more than she should have), and Draven has more happiness and peace than he deserves in an era that too many paid too high of a price to achieve.


End file.
